Hi, this is Tom Corley. I’m the author of "Rich Habits."

Wealth, success, being in the middle class, being poor is all about your habits. Reading certain specific books — this is what the self-made millionaires do to help increase their wealth.

You don’t have to do a lot. 15 to 20 minutes is all it takes to develop more knowledge, to build your knowledge-base and to improve yourself. You start out with that 15 to 20 minutes of reading every day, and the next thing you know you’ll be doing an hour a day because you’ll be so excited about all the information that you’re learning.

So, I found in my research that there are some common books that the self-made millionaires read. Now, there are self-help books that they read and "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is one of them. But they also read a lot of biographies of other successful people.

Why? Why would they read about someone else’s life? Inside these books — these autobiographies or these biographies of successful people is actually a history of all the mistakes that they made. And one of the things that I uncovered in my research is: mentors are the fast-track to building wealth. Well, a book — an autobiography or biography can be a mentor. It can point you in the right direction. It can tell you what to do and what not to do.